Concerned about the quality of driving in England, the Department of
Transport has devised a new scheme in order to identify poor drivers
and give good drivers the opportunity to recognise them whilst driving.

For this reason as from the middle of May 2006 those drivers who are
found to be driving badly, which includes:

-overtaking in dangerous places;
-hovering within one inch of the car in front; -stopping sharply;
-speeding in residential areas; -pulling out without indication;
-performing U turns inappropriately in busy high-streets; -under taking
on motorways and -taking up more than one lane in multi lane roads,

These drivers will be issued with flags, white with a red cross,
signifying their inability to drive properly. These flags must be
clipped to a door of the car and be visible to all other drivers and
pedestrians. Those drivers who have shown particularly poor driving
skills will have to display a flag on each side of the car to indicate
their greater lack of skill and general lower intelligence mindset to
the general public. Please circulate this to as many other motorists as
you can so that drivers and pedestrians will be aware of the meaning of
these flags.

Concerned about the quality of driving in England, the Department of
Transport has devised a new scheme in order to identify poor drivers
and give good drivers the opportunity to recognise them whilst driving.

For this reason as from the middle of May 2006 those drivers who are
found to be driving badly, which includes:

-overtaking in dangerous places;
-hovering within one inch of the car in front; -stopping sharply;
-speeding in residential areas; -pulling out without indication;
-performing U turns inappropriately in busy high-streets; -under taking
on motorways and -taking up more than one lane in multi lane roads,

These drivers will be issued with flags, white with a red cross,
signifying their inability to drive properly. These flags must be
clipped to a door of the car and be visible to all other drivers and
pedestrians. Those drivers who have shown particularly poor driving
skills will have to display a flag on each side of the car to indicate
their greater lack of skill and general lower intelligence mindset to
the general public. Please circulate this to as many other motorists as
you can so that drivers and pedestrians will be aware of the meaning of
these flags.

Department of Transport.

Click to expand...

Funny you should mention that. When the car flag thing started I jokingly told the kids the same thing. One doorflag means bad driver, two doorflags really bad driver, two doorflags AND a flag laid out on the parcel shelf we're turning round and going in the opposite direction.

It started off as a joke, and to be honest I didn't think they'd taken much notice to my mutterings from the front seat. Now it's become some sort of past time of theirs, which is great when we're in the comfort and quiet of the car, but when we're in a carpark! .....

"Look at THAT one. They MUST be really bad drivers."

Which spookily they do just as the driver is alighting. It's then that I adopt the expression 'they're not with me'....

...and then the utter mongs who seem to think that hanging a flag in the back window seems like a REALLY good idea! Yeah, let's just totally obscure the rear view. The fact that some of them are such crap drivers that they have broken BOTH wing mirrors is, I suppose, irrelevant. I mean, who needs to see what's happening behind them? "If I can't see it, then the crash behind me can't be my fault...."

I'm no expert but I wouldn't say they're inept. They're maybe not the class of team that dedicated followers of the English game would like but at least they're in the tournament and, if I'm not wrong, currently at the top of their group?

Yes, they won their group, but what I am thinking of is the ridiculous amount of tabloid hype they had before the tournament where it seemed that all we had to do was turn up to win it. Since then there has been the failure to score against Paraguay (they had to do it for us), the narrow win against T&T (2 goals in last 7 minutes) and the squeaky draw against Sweden, including the injury to "the Boy Owen". The tabs have been less than fulsome in their praise of the team, and it just seems to me that I'm not seeing so many flags on vehicles compared with, say, two weeks ago. I felt the two might be linked.

Don't get me wrong I want to see England win it. But Argentina for runners up as I have them in our sweepstake!

I certainly don't blame the English media for hyping the team up. National pride is at stake and the more people supporting the team the better.

Will they win it? I've no idea, I don't know enough about football to decide which team is better than another. A wee bit of luck always helps though and if they do win it'll make a lot of football supporters very happy.